Quotes About Our Government

#1. Even the dumber parts of our government are not run by idiots. These are ordinary people like us, doing a job. By and large, they're trying to do it as well as they can. Or at least as often as people in the private sector try to do as well as they can.

P. J. O'Rourke

#2. But, no matter how big or small dictators are, they all accept 100 percent the principle that granting government authority to manipulate our lives and control our property is legitimate and morally acceptable.

Ron Paul

#3. When the U.S. government stops wasting our resources by trying to maintain the price of gold, its price will sink to ... $6 an ounce rather than the current $35 an ounce.

Henry S. Reuss

#4. People know something has gone terribly wrong with our government and it has gotten so far off track. But people also know that there is nothing wrong in America that a good old-fashioned election can't fix.

Sarah Palin

#5. Our government is built upon the vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands, and a government built on them stands upon corruption and revolution.

Henry Ward Beecher

#6. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Ronald Reagan

#7. With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.

Thomas Jefferson

#8. We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#9. Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it.

Anthony Albanese

#10. The problem is not that America does not have energy. The problem is that our government - alone among the governments of the world - will not allow its own people to recover the energy that they possess.

Jim Talent

#11. In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.

Lawrence Lessig

#12. Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#13. Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.

Ron Paul

#14. A government capable of controlling the whole, and bringing its force to a point, is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. We combine in society, with an expectation to have our persons and properties defended against unreasonable exactions either at home or abroad.

Oliver Ellsworth

#15. The government that came into power after the April 1994 elections was going to need a budget. It was drafted by our finance minister, Derek Keys, and he convinced them of the necessity to stay within the free-market principles that had been in force in South Africa for decades.

F. W. De Klerk

#16. When I speak of Team India I believe that the foundation for India's development will not be the single pillar of the Central Government, but 30 pillars comprising the Central Government and all our States.

Narendra Modi

#17. We know that this nation entered into solemn treaties [with Indian tribes] which have been continuously violated for more than 250 years. It's a disgrace. It's an outrage. We must do everything in our power to keep those treaties. Otherwise, the word of the United States government is no good.

John McCain

#18. Our government should speak a common language with the American people - plain English.

Alan Siegel

#19. We see government's mission as fostering and enabling the important realms - our businesses, service clubs, Little Leagues, churches - to flourish.

Mitch Daniels

#20. An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

Thomas Jefferson

#21. Our citizens are tired of big government raising their taxes and cooking up new ways to micromanage their lives, our citizens are tired of big government killing jobs with their do-gooder policies. In short the people are Fed Up!

Rick Perry

#22. It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

Alexander Hamilton

#23. Our own government has become our enemy.

Chuck Baldwin

#24. I understand how bureaucracies work. And that's important because our government has become a vast, huge, bloated, corrupt bureaucracy.

Carly Fiorina

#25. If we don't get this economy going, the numbers that represent this stimulus package are going to be small compared to the loss of revenue to the federal government for our economy.

Judd Gregg

#26. We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.

Nelson Mandela

#27. Let's be honest about this; the liberal agenda with failed stimulus plans and government entitlement programs is crippling our economy and our quality of life.

Alveda King

#28. Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.

Grover Norquist

#29. Negative personal attacks have no place in public life and serve to erode public confidence in our basic institutions of government.

Mike Pence

#30. Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.

Grover Cleveland

#31. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

Herbert Hoover

#32. I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.

Mike Huckabee

#33. The single most important duty of the federal government is to protect and defend our national sovereignty. There are new and disturbing reports of American nuclear submarines passing though Canadian waters without obtaining the permission of, or even notifying, the Canadian government.

Stephen Harper

#34. If your basic premise about the fundamental purpose of our government is that it must provide for the common defense, then no other position is possible.

Don Nickles

#35. So often, we leave the selfless side of ourselves for nights and weekends, for our charity work. It is our duty to inject that into our day-to-day business, into the work that we do, to improve corporations, to improve civil society, and to improve government.

Leila Janah

#36. I'm running for controller to ensure our government reflects the values of the people of California and increases prosperity by managing our finances smartly, efficiently and effectively.

John Perez

#37. I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own.

Gregory Peck

#38. The biggest problem confronting the country is our excessive spending. If we're not going to deal with it now, when are we going to deal with it? And we've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue.

Mitch McConnell

#39. I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop ... We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We're warriors. Soldiers.

Nas

#40. What we need is to make our senior citizens feel secure once more with their own Social Security and Medicare. But going forward, we need to personalize that program in a way that the government can't go in and raid it any more.

Sharron Angle

#41. I would like to assure you that there is no organization or any sort of repression against people who don't agree with our actions, for example in Ukraine, Crimea, or any other external issue, no one from official government organs do this.

Vladimir Putin

#42. To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his.

Sarah Palin

#43. The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time -

Kim Stanley Robinson

#44. While restoring a sense of fiscal discipline to Congress is a top priority, infrastructure spending is an important and necessary task of government. Our nation's long-term debt requires us to prioritize and economize with every tax dollar.

Cynthia Lummis

#45. Our markets have not achieved their great successes as a result of government fiat, but rather through efforts of competing interests working to meet the demands of investors and to fulfill the promises posed by advancing technology.

Arthur Levitt

#46. In order to understand more it is imperative that we improve our knowledge before choosing which side of the fence we feel compelled to belong,

J.P. Robinson

#47. On one of the most personal matters of our lives, our health care, President Obama would turn decision making over to government bureaucrats. He forced through Obama-care and I will repeal it.

Mitt Romney

#48. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from ... the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.

Daniel Webster

#49. I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.

Warren G

#50. It's a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens.

Donald Trump

#51. Hamid Gul is an actor who is definitely not in our good books. Hamid Gul is somebody who was never appreciated by our government.

Asif Ali Zardari

#52. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

Douglas MacArthur

#53. The time has come for the American government to recognize the damage that has occurred to our economy, and to take firm action to curtail what I believe is both unfair and illegal foreign competition.

Norm Dicks

#54. What my campaign is about is a political revolution - millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the hand full of billionaires.

Bernie Sanders

#55. It was, however, resolved that 'we use our private influence at present to prevent our brethren from going into court and promising to obey the law; and as soon as possible we take steps to get some flavors from the government for those who already have more wives than one.'

Abraham H. Cannon

#56. In our day, a vast majority of people is dependent either on an employer or the government-or both. One way to rate your level of independence might be to measure how long you can survive, feed your family and live in your home after your employer stops paying you anything.

Oliver DeMille

#57. A large fraction of our total economy has grown up around providing service and counseling to inadequate people
and inadequate people are the main product of government compulsion schools.

John Taylor Gatto

#58. The highest percentage of respondents say that biggest problem in the country is the government. The biggest problem facing our country today is that our government is terrible. Dissatisfaction with the government, problem numero uno by a mile.

Rachel Maddow

#59. For all our current troubles, Americans are still the hardest working, most innovative people on the face of the earth. By trusting the American people, instead of government, we'll continue to surprise and inspire the world.

Rob Portman

#60. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

Thomas Jefferson

#61. After granting amnesty to illegals 20 years ago, we have gone from 3 million illegals to 11 million illegals. Our government has been fooled once by this amnesty argument, let us not be fooled again.

Ric Keller

#62. How our government works ... it doesn't.

Lewis Black

#63. Our whole system of government is based on "We the people," but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong.

Ronald Reagan

#64. The corporations have become our government. They're not just influential. Department by department, you name it, they put their people in high government positions, they have 10,000 PACs and 35,000 lobbyists, so there's no more opening to be heard.

Ralph Nader

#65. Disaster management should be coordinated by the federal government, .. It is our exact responsibility.

Alcee Hastings

#66. I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty.

Alan Wilson

#67. I am a political animal, because for God's sakes I think "We The People" is a job. I think experienced self government demands on all levels - intellectual, moral, historical, and spiritual level. We are supposed to be engaged and give directions to our elected employees.

Ted Nugent

#68. A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.

Laozi

#69. If we had known that one of those terrorist attacks was coming, could our government have electronically eavesdropped on the attackers without a warrant?

Pete Du Pont

#70. Our fumbling government's response since Beirut - during both Republican and Democratic administrations - has been to cut and run, or to flat ignore this growing threat, apparently hoping it would go away.

David Hackworth

#71. My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility

Camille Paglia

#72. We should be disciplined and responsible and then our prosperity will be stable despite any economic crisis, inflation or a change of government

Sunday Adelaja

#73. The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system.

Jay Wright Forrester

#74. So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

Carol Moseley Braun

#75. The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.

Thomas Jefferson

#76. Our government spies and lies. Those trusted to uphold and enforce the law use it to their advantage instead.

Patricia Cornwell

#77. Vietnam is often called our only uncensored war, but that only means that the government wasn't vetting the pictures and words.

Bruce Jackson

#78. We have morons representing us. People who go up and vote for a bill that they have never read - I mean, are we crazy? Are we insane to hand over our government to those kinds of people?

Wayne Rogers

#79. We don't want the efficiency of the federal government and the compassion of the IRS to run our health care.

Todd Akin

#80. Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the
government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it
invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Louis D. Brandeis

#81. I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.'

Timothy McVeigh

#82. We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

Dennis Cardoza

#83. As governor, I work in hand in hand with tribal leaders on everything from disaster response to economic development. Tribal governments are important partners to our state government, and I value the good relationships my administration has cultivated with them.

Mary Fallin

#84. Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington
regardless of who wins the Presidency.

James Bovard

#85. Any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.

Kurt Vonnegut

#86. None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.

Barack Obama

#87. The feelings, sentiments, values and responses of our children, or of any citizen, are none of the government's damned business. That we must support a government agency that gives itself to the emotional and ideological manipulation of citizens is infamous.

Richard Mitchell

#88. I'm saying that there's way more to 9/11 than mainstream media and our government have told us.

Jesse Ventura

#89. Courage
judgment
integrity
dedication
these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State ... And these are the qualities which, with God's help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government's conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead.

John F. Kennedy

#90. We're never all going to agree with each other. We have to learn to value the diversity. It's one of the presumable principles of our government that isn't followed nearly enough - one of the jobs of the majority is to try and make the minority feel comfortable.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#91. There isn't a day I do not work at my job, or a waking moment when I do not think through a work-related problem. Even my critics cannot begrudge the long hours I put in. Our people deserve a government that works just as hard as they do.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

#92. The Saudi government uses a lot of British equipment to suppress their own people. But we're happy for our politicians to go on advertising trips to Saudi, selling our weapons at the trade conventions.

Paul Conroy

#93. History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.

James Thurber

#94. That future depends on the values of self-government, our sense of duty, loyalty, self-confidence and regard for the common good. We are a diverse country, and getting more diverse. And these virtues are what keep this great country together.

Jeff Miller

#95. The liberals think government exists to fix what's wrong with America. They find fault with our Constitution, our economic model and our core values. We disagree with the premise of their argument. We believe there's nothing wrong with America that an extra dose of freedom won't cure.

Rick Perry

#96. Conservatives need to know how important it is to fill out the census. It is one of the only things our Constitution specifically asks of U.S. citizens and boycotting will just help liberals expand government even further.

Patrick McHenry

#97. Once our country is fully engulfed in a debt crisis, our economy will be torn apart, and every American will be a victim of the federal government's failure to prevent this disaster.

Kevin McCarthy

#98. Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.

Mahatma Gandhi

#99. Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive

Ronald Reagan

#100. Having said that, I believe we must not compound the natural disaster of Katrina by creating a fiscal disaster in Congress - it is our duty to ensure that we reign in other government spending in any event, and especially in this time of national emergency.

Chris Chocola